


cradle my heart (and i'll follow you home)

by sarsaparillia



Series: templar!au [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Kiss My Ass Bioware
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-06-29 16:45:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15733431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/pseuds/sarsaparillia
Summary: There is a new Commander in Haven.





	1. prologue: a perfect year

—

.

.

.

.

.

It is very strange to be back in Ferelden.

Haven's air bites cold against Bethany's cheeks. The Frostbacks are the spine of the world, pitiless eldritch spikes that run shatterglass into the sky. They are unlike any set of mountains that Bethany has ever seen, and looking at them takes her breath away.

They tear through the sky, reaching upwards for the Beyond.

And it's easier to stare at the mountains than it is to think about everything that brought them here. The mountains are ancient and endless, unaware of conflict, unaware of strife. They exist as they always have, since the very beginning of the world. Older than time, deeper than the sea; they're outside of the salt and rust that long ago she claimed as part of herself. They're colourless, flat grey veiled in white, and they don't remind her at all of the City of Chains.

Bethany Hawke misses Kirkwall.

She hadn't even thought she could.

 

—

> A memory, coloured silver-shard sepia:

"Well," she exhales. "That's it, then. She's gone."

"…Are you alright?"

"I will be," Bethany Hawke murmurs, and wraps her arms around herself in the early morning sunlight pouring in through the window. She leans her forehead against her husband's collarbone. "I just—I just didn't think it was going to be this hard?"

"She is your sister," Alistair says.

"I know," she nods against him. "And she even said goodbye this time! She never says goodbye."

"You don't need to pretend not to be upset, Beth," he says, gentle as feathers. Alistair moves in closer, gathering her up and tucking her in and humming something quiet and careful in the back of his throat.

"That's the problem," Bethany tells his chest. Counts the beats of his heart. Breathes. "I'm not pretending."

Alistair sighs into her curls, a full-body exhalation. It's something that takes everything out of him, and it settles into all of Bethany's empty nooks and crannies. She lets it buoy her, just lets him hold her because they fit like this, together, and it feels nice.

"How were the Gallows?" she asks, eventually, when she finally feels a little more like a person and a little less like a cracked heart. "Are your recruits—"

"They're not  _my_  recruits," Alistair cuts in mildly, even though this is a  _lie_  and they both know it. Ser Cullen isn't much for running a religious order, as it turns out. He was half-drowned in paperwork the last time Bethany had seen him, and she doesn't think it's gotten better yet; Alistair trains the recruits. They are very, very young.

(Everyone, that is. So young, recruits and teachers, all at once.)

Bethany rolls her eyes so loudly that she's sure Alistair can hear it. "Are  _the_  recruits doing better?"

"Nope," Alistair says, cheerful. "I've never met a more useless group of people in my life!"

"Alistair, that's—!"

He laughs. It bubbles over her, and it's funny because Alistair stopped laughing about the Gallows a long time ago. He'd never laughed about the Gallows, actually, not really. But he laughs, now, here in the Hawke estate's foyer, and it's the most beautiful thing Bethany has ever heard. It shouldn't make her flush with affection all over, but it does.

"I know, I'm terrible," Alistair agrees sagely. He dips his head to grin into her cheekbone. "I never said I wasn't."

Bethany giggles a little helplessly. Her husband. Even when he's not a templar anymore, he's still a templar. At least he's got a sense of humour about it.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asks him.

"Survive despite me, I suppose," he hums. He follows the lines of her bones with an idle curiosity, fingers light. Over her nose, down her throat, hips, hands. Everywhere, everywhere.

Bethany shivers. "I suppose."

"I missed you," Alistair says. It sounds like he's talking to himself. "Why do I always miss you when I'm gone?"

"Because you love me," Bethany reminds him.

"That's true, I do," Alistair agrees. He brushes her curls out of her face, smiles just a very little bit as he rubs his thumb along her cheekbone. "You're still as pretty as you were that day in the Chantry. Prettier."

Bethany leans into it, closes her eyes. Alistair's skin is warm, and it's so good,  _so good_  because it's just the two of them, and there's nothing to ruin it.

Except everything, that is. Bethany takes a breath.

"…Did you talk to Ser Cullen, today?"

The line of Alistair's mouth dips into a frown, and hardens. "No."

Bethany just nods. She can't force a détente between them; she can't force Alistair to forgive Ser Cullen any more than she can force her mother to stop antagonizing the Divine, or any more than she could ever have stopped Marian from being Marian.

"You still think I should," he translates her silence. Alistair makes a little noise of frustration at the back of his throat, some cross of incredulous laughter and disbelieving snort. "Beth. Come on."

"You don't have to," Bethany says. Her voice is steady, despite herself. "I just think you should."

Alistair snorts again, louder this time. "Why? Why should I? He's had enough time to get his head on straight. It wasn't that hard, Beth,  _I_  managed it!"

"But you had me," Bethany says, so softly. She tilts her head to look him in the eye, his hand still cupped around her cheek. "You had  _me_ , Alistair, you had a  _reason_ —"

"It doesn't matter." Alistair doesn't raise his voice. He does not snap, he hardly ever gets truly angry He does not snap nor raise his voice nor get angry right now, either. But there is steel in his posture, slick and sharp in his shoulders, and all of those hard lines to his mouth get harder.

Bethany lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She slips her arms around him, presses her cheek to his chest. For a minute, she listens to the beat of his heart. The steady pound of it settles her down, helps her find the right words.

"You just seem so lonely," she whispers.

"And  _you're_  clearly feeling better," Alistair says, grinning, but there's still something shadowed in his eyes. This fight isn't over, for all that it's not really a fight. Friendship is hard. Trust is harder. Love is hardest of all. "See? We've got so many other things to worry about."

"Don't remind me," Bethany says. "But I—I do think you should talk to him."

"I know you do," Alistair says. "But I can't, Beth. Please don't ask me to."

She looks up at him for a long moment. The world passes away between them.

"Alright," Bethany says, at last. "I won't."

And it's not a lie. She won't ask him to, because there is nothing in the world that Alistair wouldn't do, not if she asked it of him. It twists all of her guts up, sometimes, the way that he's so willing to cut himself open for her. Bethany thinks of Lothering, and of the foundries, and of the Wounded Coast. She thinks of their children, and her sister, and the city in flames. She thinks of the slums, and of the Hanged Man, and of the Gallows.

She thinks of the templars.

No, Bethany decides, she won't ask.

Not yet.

—

There's snow this high up.

Bethany isn't sure why she's so surprised by it. The Frostbacks have their name for a reason, and they carry it with all the icy grace that Bethany herself never quite got the hang of. Liana and Carina have been running around the entire morning, trying to shove it down each other's collars every chance they chance.

They are going to be  _such_  a terror when they get older.

But for now, they've melted into the faceless gaggle of Haven's children, just two more open mouths on a many-headed monster. They shriek with laughter, the sound bouncing away into the clear blue sky. It's not a bad idea that they make friends while they can. And Malcolm—

Malcolm's got one fist in his mouth and the other twined into the sway of Bethany's skirt. Her son stares out at the world with dark, wild eyes. He doesn't stop watching for a second, but he never goes very far.

"Mama," he says.

"What is it, darling?"

"Auntie Sonny."

Bethany looks to where he's pointing. There indeed is her wayward cousin; Solona has her hair pulled back from her face, pale and bloodless in the cheeks. Her hair is a stark ink-coloured stain against the white of the landscape, so stock-still she might as well be a statue. She's staring up at the mountains, face wiped clean.

She looks  _so_  like Marian.

"Yes," Bethany agrees with him. "Auntie Sonny."

Malcolm nods very solemnly. He reaches up to take Bethany's hand, and tugs her imperiously forwards—she lets him lead her all the way to Solona's side, at which point he somehow manages to take Solona's hand, too. The rest of Haven's children are shrieking with glee down by the frozen lake, but Bethany's son seems content to stay here, and makes no move to dislodge himself, even when Solona blinks owlishly at them both.

"He wanted to come say hello," Bethany translates.

"Did he, now?" Solona asks, more to Mal than to Bethany.

Malcolm nods again but fast, this time, nod-nod- _nod_ , like he's trying very hard to convince Solona to  _stay put_. He knows how to talk, and Bethany  _knows_  that he knows how to talk, but she's beginning to think that Mal takes a very specific pleasure in forcing all the adults in his life to interpret his silences.

Solona goes soft all over.

There aren't a lot of things in the world that have the ability to turn Bethany's cousin into cloud-soft spun sugar, but her son is one of them. Solona kneels down in the snow, the  _crunch-crunch_  of it loud in the ears, but she looks Malcolm in the face when she talks to him.

"One day, you're going to have to tell me that yourself," Solona says.

"Do I gotta?" Mal asks, voice small. Bethany blinks down at him. Look at her son, answering questions of his own volition. The world  _is_  changing, isn't it.

"You have to ask for the things you want," Solona tells him. There's a strange lilt to her voice, something that says that these words come from personal experience. "If you don't, no one will know you want them."

Malcolm considers this for a long time, little face furrowed up. "What do  _you_  want, Aunt Sonny?"

"I don't know," says Solona.

"S'okay," Mal says. "Auntie Nerry's not gone forever."

Solona makes a tiny choked-off noise in the back of her throat, a sound that feels like pain, and Bethany aches in her chest. Andraste, but her son always does seem to see the things that people want to keep hidden from themselves. Worse, he's too little to know when the knots in someone's soul are there as protective netting and not little pearls to be shaken about. There are so many things about her cousin that her cousin keeps to herself, but her knots are netting to keep herself in one piece. Bethany knows that much.

Solona bends forward to kiss Malcolm on the top of his head. "I guess you're right."

Bethany's son nods very seriously, and waits graciously until Solona is standing again.

And then he tugs on Bethany's sleeve.

"Yes," Bethany answers the unspoken query. Well, there goes that. Still, it's progress. Some days, Mal won't even talk to her and Alistair. Some days, he won't even talk to the  _twins_. Talking to Solona might have used up his quota for the day, and that's alright. "You can go find your sisters."

Malcolm hugs her leg and scampers, like she'll take the permission back. As though she would even if she could.

There are so many things in the world that Bethany would take back, but her children are not one of them.

And so Bethany surveys Haven, bright in the mid-morning sunlight. She inhales freezing air, the bite so sharp in her lungs that it stings, prickles all the way through, stuffs up her nose and has her shivering. The Conclave is tomorrow, but she wishes it were warmer. Standing out here in the cold doesn't help anyone. She looks at her cousin out of the corner of her eye, and wonders just where in the Maker name's her sister is.

"…Do you think this will work?" Bethany asks, at last.

"No," says Solona.

Bethany doesn't ask how Solona knows what she's on about, because of course her cousin knows. She watches the way Solona's hands shake, fist tight into her skirt, forced to stop the tremble even as her knuckles are clenched so hard they're white. Her cousin wouldn't expect the Conclave to come to anything, would she? What reason does she have to expect any different? In the end, it is still the Chantry.

"We have to try," Bethany reminds her cousin softly. "It's not like we have much choice."

And they don't. They have no choices, and especially no good choices at all. The Divine's Conclave is a chance for  _peace_ , and both Bethany and Alistair acknowledge this, which is why they're here in the first place. Beyond Seeker Pentaghast and Varric and Mother, they're here because there's no good choices, and what else is there to do?

"I know," Solona exhales. "But I wish—"

"That Nerry were here?"

"Yes."

But there is a very good reason that they're here in Haven alone. Neria Surana helped blow Kirkwall's Chantry to pieces, and she hasn't apologized yet. Bethany doesn't think she's going to, either. And for that matter, it's probably a moot point regardless: this isn't something that an apology can fix. And it's not because it was just the explosion itself.

The Mage-Templar War was coming whether they wanted it to or not.

A year and a half into the bloodshed, this Conclave is their only hope.

(It's a wish, and Bethany could really use a wish right now.)

Bethany leans very slightly into Solona's space, just a brush of arm against arm. She doesn't move away even when her cousin startles, and for a moment, they're just two women at the end of the world, trying to pick up the pieces. It's harder without Marian between them, because even now, even after all this time, there is no one in the world who can force change the way Bethany's older sister can.

But maybe that's why they're here in the first place.

Trying to fill the hole.

When Solona exhales, there are a lot of unsaid things in the breath. She tucks her arm into Bethany's, hooks their elbows. Apologies don't always have to be said aloud, and this is one such thing. "Should we go find your husband?"

"Yes," Bethany says. "Let's."

—

 

> A memory, coloured afternoon lavender:

"Oh, Creators, I don't think this is a good idea."

"Do  _you_  want to tell my mother she can't have the broken cursed mirror for her students to study?"

"No, not really," says Merrill, glancing the mirror over out of the corner of her eye. It stands perfectly motionless in the gloom of the back corner, and until five minutes ago, it had been covered in a sheet.

That was the way that Bethany had liked it. It gives her the creeps.

"Neither do I," says Bethany, grim. She can feel the Force magic glittering beneath her skin. She wonders where her children are, today. "But either one of does it, or do as we've been told and bring it to her."

"Must we?"

"It's your mirror, Merrill. I'm here to help."

"Mirror- _frame_ ," Merrill shakes a little as she stresses the word. "There's not much mirror left. You know that, you were there when I shattered it!"

"I know, but it's better than leaving it here," Bethany says, and determinedly doesn't look at the few remaining shards that cling to the mirror's frame. They never reflected anything worth seeing, anyway. She bumps Merrill's hip, in solidarity and in old friendship. The easy kind of thing that comes with knowledge that you've seen a person at their worst, and still come out of it the other side alright.

Merrill bites at her lip. her hands skittering over the twisted frame. "You're right, I know you're right," but there's something so awfully melancholy to the way she lingers. "I just—I spent so much time trying t'fix it, and then the Keeper…"

"I'll help you look for another, if you want. One that isn't…"

"Tainted?" Merrill supplies.

"I was going to say possessed," Bethany says, softly, like an apology.

But Tainted works, too. Bethany knows what this mirror means to Merrill, and she knows what it will cost her friend to give it up. But this shattered old thing keeps her tied to the past in the worst way. And this is Mother's doing, truly—Mother, more than anyone, thinks that Merrill needs to move on and find something else to live for.

(Mother doesn't know about Fenris, which may be part of it.)

And Bethany has no doubt that Merrill will find it eventually.

It just might take a while.

Because it's not as though Bethany doesn't  _understand_. The elven ruins scattered across the world are many, and what's left of them speaks of a civilization so brilliant with magic that it likely used little else. And they've lost so much. There will be other mirrors, Bethany's sure; if  _this_  particular mirror hadn't been such a problem, and hadn't involved a demon and too much blood magic to bear thinking about, Bethany might have even helped.

That's what you do for friends, Bethany's learned. You help when you can, even if you don't particularly approve of the way they're going about it.

"I don't know if there's any more left," Merrill says, wistful. She touches the cold otherworld metal with gentle fingers. "The stories don't—they're not clear?"

"Merrill," Bethany says.

"Yes?"

"This one… your clan found it? In the middle of nowhere?"

"Tamlen and Lyna found it in the Brecilian forest," Merrill says. Bethany watches the way the words gut her friend. She'd not wanted to admit them. "And then—and then I took it."

Bethany knows how the rest of this particular story goes. The two elves had found it and then they'd both eventually died or disappeared; Lyna first, and then Tamlen later. Merrill had told her the story once, a long time ago, walking along the edge of the Waking Sea. It had been a very quiet story. A sad one, too, all the worse for being true.

"But that's where elven ruins  _are_ ," Bethany says. It's hard to get at what she's trying to get at. Maybe she doesn't have the right words. Maybe Merrill does. "In the middle of nowhere."

"Old places," Merrill says, nods. "Wild places."

"Those places still exist, you know."

"I know, but…"

 _It won't be the same_. It hangs in the air between them, blooming violet-purple as a bruise. What hasn't Merrill sacrificed for this mirror, Bethany wonders. What hasn't she given up, what hasn't she lost. Even Marian's gone and left Merrill alone.

And she's not wrong.

It  _won't_  be the same.

But maybe that's alright.

Together, Bethany and Merrill stare at the broken mirror for a long time, the air quiet between them. The world filters in from outside, salt and sweet and sour on the alienage breezes, all blue and pink and sickly yellow-green. Things colour up so well, out here.

"Do you regret it?"

"I'm s'posed to, I think?"

"But do you?"

"Oh," says Merrill. She leans her head against Bethany's shoulder, closes her eyes. It aches like a bruise; the awful way she inhales like she's chewing on broken glass. There's a lot of that going around, these days. Bethany takes her weight. "No. I don't."

—

The evening sun sinks beyond the mountain range to plunge the world into darkness.

Inside, Bethany lights a candle. And then she lights another, and then another and another, and another and another and another until the entire cabin is bathed in that contented golden glow. The twins have piled into the trundle in the corner with Mal tucked between. They tired themselves out today, running around, and Bethany catches herself smiling at them a little helplessly.

Andraste, she doesn't know what to  _do_  with how much she loves them.

But she tamps it down. Now isn't really the time to sort out what it means to be a parent. The Conclave begins tomorrow, and all of Haven is on edge with it. She can't be useful—only the leaders of the mage rebellion and the templar Knight-Commanders can do something, now, with the Divine to mediate—and so perhaps it's better to keep her family together while she can.

There's just no telling what's going to happen next. And Alistair—

Alistair blows in through the front door on a gust of cold winter air sprinkled through with snowflakes, and she forgets what she'd been on about.

"Hello there," Bethany rises from where she's been sitting at the table to smile at him. "Decided to come back, have you?"

He smells like leather and skin, and that peculiar scent that clings when it's frigid outside, bitter like old metal. It curls around her, the echoing ancient halls of her heart ringing with it. Here is her husband, for all that he's never really been away.

Bethany shivers.

Tilts her head up to be kissed.

"If I have to break up one more fight between two grown men who should know better, I'm going to quit," Alistair says, darkly, and has the gall to only kiss the top of her head. There's ice frozen in his scruff. "Seeker Pentaghast can find someone  _else_  to fight her war."

"She  _did_  ask Ser Cullen first," Bethany reminds him. "You do remember that, don't you? You told her  _no_ , Alistair."

(She takes his cloak from him before he has a chance to protest; the ram wool around the edges needs to dry by the fire. He'll catch his death if it doesn't, and then she'll have to break all sorts of holy laws to bring him back. Bethany hadn't been planning on necromancy, today. Or any day, really. The soft-headed idiot.)

"He's more useless than I am," Alistair grumbles. "He made a mess of the Gallows, I wasn't going to let him muck this up, too."

"Are you trying to convince me, or you?" Bethany asks him, softly, the corner of her mouth pulling up. "Because it doesn't really sound like you're talking to me."

Alistair huffs irritation. "Don't start, love, it was a very long day."

"Was it that bad?" she asks.

"…Never as bad as the Gallows," he amends. His jerkin comes off, and then the doublet, and then the undershirt and finally he's shed the outer layers of his clothes at last. Alistair comes over to put his arms around her in nothing but a threadbare shirt and breeches, and nips at her ear.

Bethany squirms away. "Quit it!"

"Nah, don't want to," he grins. " _Someone's_  ticklish."

"I am not, I'm—!"

He nips again, and Bethany squeaks. "You're going to wake the twins up!"

"If you don't keep it down, technically  _you're_  the one who's going to wake them up—"

"You're being terrible again," she tells him frankly.

"Yes, I thought we'd been over this," Alistair says, and proceeds to rub his scruff over her entire face. He's grinning widely when he comes up for air, absolutely unrepentant. "I am entirely terrible when it comes to you."

"Because that's news to me," Bethany says. Sighs. This  _man_. "Will you stop talking and kiss me already?"

"That's what I was trying to do, Beth."

Her jaw drops. "Liar, you were not trying to kiss me. You were trying to make me screech and wake half the village up!"

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"You—ugh!" She shakes her head at him, mouth open. She is not charmed. She is not charmed! This  _man_! He is not charming! "One of these days you're going to get it, Alistair, did you know that?"

Alistair muffles his laughter into her lips, ducking down sweet and easy to finally, finally kiss her on the mouth. Bethany winds her hands into the neckline of his stupid threadbare shirt, keeps him close. Everything inside of her goes very still the way it always does when Alistair kisses her. And some forgotten drop of magic deep inside of her chest ripples and blooms, murmurs  _you're here_  and  _yes_  and  _mine_.

"Happy, my lady?" Alistair asks when he pulls away, voice catching with faint breathlessness.

"No, not at all," Bethany says. Her hands tighten in his shirt. If he's breathless, she's not much better. "Do it again."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Do you  _need_  a choice?"

"She makes a decent point," Alistair says under his breath, more to himself than to her. His pupils swallow up the firelight, so wide that there's only a thin ring of honey-brown iris left, and his hands hover a hairsbreadth above her hips. "She makes a very decent point."

"Alistair," Bethany says.

"Yes, dear?"

"I'd like to be kissed, now."

Alistair laughs soft and low as bedroom eyes, and obliges her.

—

 

> A memory, coloured arterial crimson:

Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast has no business in Kirkwall.

Or at least, she has no business in Kirkwall that could conceivably bring her to the ancestral halls of the Amell Estate, and  _certainly_  none as would have her sitting stiffly in Bethany's mother's solar, pointedly ignoring the pleasantries of a high tea. Bethany blinks, mystified. What on earth has her mother done to bring a  _Seeker_  down on their heads? Has she finally done something to offend the Divine's sensibilities so badly? No Exalted March with all the Circles in revolt, but instead a Seeker?

Honestly, Bethany can't decide which option is worse.

Currently, it's leaning towards  _this one_.

"Mother? Is everything alright?"

"Oh, there you are, darling," Leandra Hawke says, so easily. She sits with her hands folded in her lap. Dressed in muted purples and heather greys, she looks for all the world like someone who hasn't ever threatened to fight the world's religious leader on a whim and a prayer. "We have a visitor!"

Bethany, however, knows better.  _I can see that, Mother_ , she doesn't say, even though she wants to.

"Good afternoon," Bethany says, instead. Caution threads its way through her voice, pickling up in Kirkwall's brine and rust. She's not her sister, and she's not her mother, and she has three very small children to think about. "I don't believe we've met?"

The Seeker clears her throat, straightens in her chair. She holds herself the way a warrior does, square, rooted to the spot so nothing could move her even if it tried. Aveline holds herself the same way, Bethany thinks.

"I am Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast, and I am here to speak to the Champion of Kirkwall."

"I… see," says Bethany. She takes a breath in, for fortification. "I'm sorry, but I don't think we can help you. My sister isn't here. She's been gone for weeks."

"What? Where?"

"I don't know," says Bethany. Her lips twist. "She hasn't told us."

"But you heard from her?" demands the Seeker. "I must speak with her, it cannot wait!"

Bethany can  _feel_  the thinning of her mother's lips. The Seeker does not bother with games; Bethany appreciates it, but she knows that her mother does not. This directness is not the way things are done, in Kirkwall.

But then, what does it matter, how things are done? Better, how things  _used_  to be done. The whole world has imploded, fallen to pieces, gone up in flames to nothing but smoke and ash on the breeze from a funeral pyre.

It's all so  _pointless_.

Marian Hawke is gone.

"We haven't heard from her. Not since she left," says Bethany, and this isn't even a lie. One would think that the Cahmpion of Kirkwall would be less terrible at letter-writing, but Bethany also knows that her sister hates to leave even the smallest trail of crumbs to follow. Marian won't be found until she wants to be, and not a second before. "May I ask why you want to know?"

The Seeker makes a frustrated sound at the back of her throat. "I—cannot say."

"Then you should not be surprised that we are not forthcoming, Seeker," Mother says, before Bethany can even open her mouth. The Hawke matriarch watches the proceedings with cool blue eyes, face devoid of emotion except for a strange hard line at her mouth. "You may tell the Divine that I still do not concede my point."

"Most Holy—"

"Sent you," Mother cuts the Seeker off with very little ceremony. "I am aware."

"Madame Hawke—"

"I am  _also_  aware that Varric Tethras is currently enjoying the hospitality of the Viscount's dungeons, on your account. I would have you return him before I allow this any further, Seeker," Mother drawls. "If you cannot treat my daughter's  _friends_  with something approaching respect, why in the Maker's name would I tell you where  _she_  is?"

A horrible mottled flush crawls across the Seeker's face. The woman has the decency to look  _ashamed_  of herself.

Bethany swallows down horror.

It is true that she hasn't seen Varric in the last few days, but that's not unusual. He is very involved in the rebuilding efforts, or at the very least, he's very involved in  _avoiding_  the deshyrs involved in the rebuilding efforts. But Andraste's filthy knickers, how does her mother  _know_  these things? Who has she bribed  _this_  time?

And why didn't Bethany  _know_  about it?!

Mother's face has taken on that porcelain quality that it gets when she's about to verbally shred someone to pieces. She sits and waits patiently for the Seeker to stop gaping like a fish, hands still folded in her lap.

Bethany forgets that her mother can, in fact, take care of herself.

"He is not in the dungeon," the Seeker finally manages. And then quieter, under her breath, mutters, "anymore."

Mother simply waits.

(Marian was right. It is  _marvelous_  to see all that passive-aggressiveness directed at someone else. Bethany can appreciate it only because she knows that the likelihood of the Seeker holding this against her is small. The Seeker does not seem the kind of woman to hold someone else's sins against a person. Or, in this case, someone else's rudeness.)

After a very long moment, the Seeker gathers herself. "I will have the dwarf released. But please—" and here, she breaks for just the tiniest fraction of a second, a frantic fear leashed tight behind her teeth, "—I must speak to the Champion."

"My daughter told you the truth," Mother says. "Marian isn't here."

The Seeker slumps just a little bit. She's a sharp creature, the Seeker; sharp line of jaw and sharp line of mouth, sharp line where the weight of a sword and shield should be. She really is very much like Aveline, Bethany thinks, but less manipulative, if that's even possible.

Cassandra Pentaghast is a battering ram, but without hands to bear it, not even a battering ram has direction.

And Bethany thinks that her mother can see this, too.

"…Go to the Gallows, Seeker," Mother says. "Speak to Ser Cullen. You may find it illuminating. If the Divine is planning what I think she's is, you may be able to get some use out of him."

"What? Mother, no, he's—!"

"You know very well that he can't keep doing what he's doing, darling," Mother cuts Bethany off. She crooks a pale eyebrow, allows her gaze to sweep over the Seeker again, a measuring up and down. "That boy won't ever be happy in Kirkwall. He's not healthy, here. He doesn't know how to be."

"But Alistair—"

"Your husband will be fine," Mother says, dryly. "He does keep insisting that he's not bothered, doesn't he?"

"I—" and Bethany wants to say that  _no_ , it's not alright, and that Alistair  _won't_  be fine. Because she knows her husband, and until he's sorted out his issues with what happened the night of the explosion, he won't be able to come to terms with Ser Cullen.

Forgiveness is very hard.

Bethany knows that better than anyone.

And so she exhales, and lets the fight slip away. Mother isn't wrong. It would do Ser Cullen some good to be away from the City of Chains.

"That's what I thought," says Mother. She returns her attention to the Seeker. "Now that that's cleared up, Varric?"

"He must tell the Divine what has happened. He is the only one who—the only one who knows what truly happened, he must—"

"This is not a suggestion, Seeker," Mother says. "You will return Varric unharmed, and you will do it now. Today."

"…Yes, Madame Hawke."

"Lovely," says Mother. "You will be returning for supper?"

"I should not—"

"That was  _also_  not a suggestion, Seeker," Mother says, kind. "You  _will_  be returning for supper. And afterwards, you may go speak to Ser Cullen. Yes?"

(Bethany really has to stop wondering why Marian is the way she is. Of  _course_  her sister is the way she is, look at where she came from! It'll be half a miracle if one of the twins doesn't end up exactly the same, or even worse,  _Malcolm_. Andraste, please, no. One Marian is enough. Two Marians would be too many.  _Especially_  a Marian with magic. That's just asking for trouble.)

"Yes, Madame Hawke," sighs the Seeker. She doesn't look pleased about any of this. Cassandra Pentaghast is not the sort used to being bowled over by an old woman, especially not an old woman with no apparent weapons at her disposal.

Bethany can't say she blames her. The older Mother gets, the worse she seems to be.

Maker's breath, what a day.

And so while Mother chats Seeker Pentaghast into standing and then out the door to go retrieve Varric from whatever hidey-hole she has him bolted into, Bethany rushes to the kitchen to go make sure that her children haven't found a way to set the whole estate on fire. She'll keep an eye on them like that, just like that, all the way until Alistair comes home and then she'll hide in his chest, for a while.

A few more hours.

That's all she needs.

—

The next morning, Bethany sleepily kisses her husband  _goodbye_. The sun's not quite above the Frostback's peaks, quite yet; it's still so early that the Maker himself isn't alive, never mind the rest of Thedas. The twins and Mal haven't even begun to stir, yet. The sky outside the window is faint pastel pink, not even the bare beginnings of the sunrise. False dawn. She wraps herself up in one of the less-scratchy wool blankets from their bed, and clumsily manages to get out of bed.

Her husband, already awake and dressed because he has responsibilities like real people do, has the gall to chuck her under the chin.

"Be good," Alistair says, gentle as goose feathers.

"I'm always good," Bethany says, as prim as anyone can be when they're mostly asleep.

Alistair chokes on his laughter. But he bends down and presses his mouth to her forehead like a habit, anyway. "That's true, you are. I won't be home 'til dark, alright? We're down in the valley, today, so just…"

"Keep safe?" Bethany finishes. "I'll try. Are you keeping people away from the Conclave?"

"Trying to, yeah," Alistair nods, and then his face turns grumpy. "One more Maker-forsaken fight, and I swear…"

"You'll be fine," she tells him. Bethany catches his fingers, studies his palms. She finds that it's easier to stifle her own anxiety about the day if she's not quite looking him in the eye. "If we're lucky, it'll be over soon."

"We're never lucky, Beth," he says. He brushes curls out of her face, cracks an ungainly sort of smile. It's wry all the way through, pulling his face up crooked. "Darkspawn, remember?"

"This won't be half so bad," Bethany says. "The Chantry has nothing on darkspawn."

"She says."

"Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?"

"Oh, probably," Alistair murmurs. He lingers in her space for a long moment like sunlight, settling softly in her hair, and he reaches up to cup his hand around her cheek. "But I'm going to kiss you, first."

"Good," says Bethany, smilingly, allows herself to be kissed.

And later, she won't remember much more about this day. She won't remember the awful shivery hush blanketing the whole village, nor will she remember the way that Malcolm keeps crying. She won't remember how the twins only make it so far as the doorway before they turn back to crawl into Bethany's lap. She won't remember how easy it is, to stay inside. She won't remember the sun streaming brilliant in through the window, or how much it felt like a fragile hope, dashed violent against rocks.

She'll remember worrying about Alistair. But she's always worrying about Alistair. It's hard to forget.

The day goes on. It's half-noon when a shock goes through the air, a low moaning  _groan_  that echoes through the very foundations. Bethany looks up from her reading, eyes wide, magic clenched tight in her fists. All her hair stands up on end, curls crick-crackling, inhaling fast and sharp. She puts herself between the outside world and her children, without even thinking about it.

The whole world is suddenly trembling.

Bethany only has time to open the door, and then—

( _Oh, Andraste, no_.)

With a horrible, end-of-the-world rumble, the sky tears open, and the Fade pours through.

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.


	2. looking out into the cold night

—

.

.

.

.

.

"Well, let's not do  _that_  again.  _That_  was  _terrible_."

"Terrible is a bit of an understatement, Alistair," Bethany says, slumping against his shoulder. Every part of her  _aches_ : her limbs, her head, the leaden hole in her chest where her magic usually lives. Andraste, she doesn't think she could magic up candlelight, right now, not even if she tried. She's pitch-black, hollow, used up.

Whatever punched through the sky punched through Bethany, too.

Alistair tilts his head down to crook an eyebrow at her. "Understatement? Me? No, never."

Bethany makes a high-pitched little sound, half-mirth and half exhaustion. He  _would_ , wouldn't he. "You're lucky I like you so much."

"Mmm, yes, we've been over that," Alistair says, nodding wisely. "I  _am_  lucky you like me so much. You're a very good reason to finish up dealing with the demons fast as I can. The children, too."

"What?" Bethany says, startled. Something grabs tight at her throat, convulses madly, lungs gone deflated all of a sudden. Because Bethany knows her husband, and she knows how he is when he's got an idea in his head. "What are you talking about? You're not—Alistair, you're not going back out there? Are you?"

"I don't think I have much a choice, love, it was in the job description and our esteemed Seeker might have my head if I don't—"

"Demons were not in the job description! That's—have you lost your mind?! You'll get killed!"

"The sky exploded and didn't manage to kill me, Beth. I'll be fine," Alistair says, grinning like it's a joke, but when Bethany doesn't laugh—because she can't laugh, she can't find humour in this, there is a  _hole in the sky_  and he's about to  _go back out there_  to fight demons because he can't help himself, can he? And so,  _no_ , actually, she doesn't have one single smile left inside of her—the grin falls away, and Alistair cups her cheek.

He stares at her very seriously for a very long minute.

"I'm coming back," Alistair says. It's a steely thing, quiet but incredibly final in its solidity, and even more reassuring. Metal all the way through.

Bethany lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Alright," she says, shoulders dropping. Resignation is bitter as ashes on her tongue. He always has to help, if he can. It's no small part of why she loves him, Andraste, so much of why she loves him, even, but the thought of losing him is intolerable. Bethany leans into his hand, hopes to the Maker that he understands all the things she's trying to say.

He must, because his eyes go soft and warm, sunlight catching over dry grass. "It's going to be fine, love. We've dealt with worse."

"Alistair, there is a  _hole_  in the  _sky_ ," Bethany says.

"And this time, your sister isn't even involved!"

Laughter bubbles to Bethany's lips, unbidden and half hysteric. Thank the Maker her sister isn't here, honestly, because Marian would manage to turn the hole in the sky into an  _opportunity_ , and then she and Alistair would end up having to clean up the mess. But making light of it—

Only Alistair,  _honestly_.

"That's not funny," Bethany tells him. "Alistair, stop laughing! It's not!"

"It's a little funny," Alistair says, swipes his thumb back and forth along the line of her cheekbone slow, and lets her drop forwards to collapse into him just a smidge. Bethany hides her face in his collarbone so that she doesn't have to look him in the eye. "Admit it, it is."

The steady pound of his heartbeat thunders all through her, and she closes her eyes.

( _Oh, my love_.)

"I'm not answering that," Bethany says, quashing down the tears that slosh behind her eyes. They've not the time to cry.

"Nor should you," Alistair agrees, sagely. His arms come up around her, anchor her back to the ground. Bethany is unspeakably grateful for this; Alistair always makes things make sense, even when he's planning to leave. And he's careful with her because right now she's a shattered creature, barely holding on, and they both know it.

Andraste, but she needs him more than anybody else.

"Don't die," Bethany whispers shakily. Her fingers curl tight into his shirt, but she manages to keep the sob wobbling in her chest down. "Please, Alistair. Please don't do that to me."

"I won't," Alistair murmurs into her curls.

_You wouldn't be able to stop it_ , she wants to cry. No one would be able to stop it, no one would be able to keep it from happening if it were meant to happen. People are  _dying_ ; the valley is full up with death and bloodied snow refracting brilliant in the sick light of the Breach above them. There's no one to make the world still the way it ought to be. No one's coming, and no one's going to keep an eye on his back. If the Maker wills her husband dead, then dead he will be. The Conclave is gone. What else is there?

Still:

Bethany unclenches her fists.

And Alistair goes.

—

The Herald of Andraste is an elf.

Better, she is an elven  _mage_.

(The irony is not lost on anyone.)

"No matter how long you stare at it, Sunshine, it ain't going away."

Bethany pulls her robes tighter around her frame, and glances down at Varric. There are ugly dark smears behind his eyes, washed out eerie yellow-green in the light of the sun through the Breach. He looks like he hasn't slept in a week. Maybe he hasn't. Bethany certainly can't remember the last time she had a good night's rest; she can't imagine that her older sister's oldest friend is much better about it.

Having him here is a comfort, though. Varric carries Kirkwall in everything he does. It's in the bright red of his shirt, the well-cut leather of his overcoat, even in the way he stands. He carries the bitter and the brine of the Waking Sea like he doesn't even know he's doing it.

It's a little of home, out here in the wilderness.

"At least it's not spitting demons, anymore," Bethany says.

"Can't guarantee it won't start up again," Varric says, grim. He surveys the white wilderness, the jagged line of the Frostbacks biting into the sky. "Shit. Remind me why we're here?"

"Because my husband decided to humour Lady Cassandra, and because you didn't really have any choice," Bethany reminds him.  _Because I'd never have let him go on his own, and you thought to write it all down_.

"Too on-the-nose, Sunshine. Let a man have his dignity!"

"Sorry, Varric," Bethany laughs, but she's not really that sorry.

It's very quiet between them for a moment. Bethany wants to say  _I miss her, too_ , because her sister is never very far from anyone's thoughts, but especially not from Varric's, and that's been truer than she wants to think about recently. Being here, out in the mountains and the cold and the wind whipping the snow from the peaks in shimmering white veils—it's harder not to think about the Champion of Kirkwall, harder not to miss her. Harder not to miss the city. Harder not to miss Mother. Harder.

Varric exhales heavily through his nose. Bethany watches the change in his face, the way he so obviously decides that it's time to talk about something else, and she lets it go.

It's better that way.

"So," Varric says, conversationally. "Is Death Wish talking to Curly again?"

"Why do you call him that?"

"Because your husband's got a death wish and it suits him," Varric says patiently, as though he's explaining something very simple to a very small child. He pats her elbow gently. "C'mon, Sunshine, we've been over this."

"He doesn't," Bethany says mutinously.

"He kinda does, though—"

She ignores him. Alistair  _does not_  have a death wish, no matter  _how_  much of his time he's spending throwing himself at demons. "No, to answer your question, I don't think he is. He hasn't—I don't think he's forgiven Ser Cullen, yet."

Varric just nods. "Can't say I blame him. Curly shoulda known better."

Bethany just sighs. Maybe they  _all_  should have known better. But they'd been young and brash and unafraid, set alight with holy vengeance and the certainty that they'd been in the  _right_. She and Alistair, building homes in one another. Marian and her friends, building up their dead ends and shaping the world. The templars, building an empire of rickety wood, begging to go up in flames.

And in the end, it had all fractured, and been buried in brilliant fire.

Ser Cullen had just been a little behind the learning curve.

"I—"

"Sunshine," Varric says, and it's still gentle, but now there's an awful tenderness to it. Like he always knew this was coming. "Sometimes you gotta accept that you can't save everyone."

"I wasn't trying to," Bethany murmurs. She's not Marian; she doesn't try to save everyone. She never has, after all. Maybe it's a little bit selfish, but sometimes Bethany can't care about anyone else except the people she already loves.

The problem is that so many of the people she loves have so little regard for their own safety.

Of course, Ser Cullen straddles that line.

Varric crooks an eyebrow at her. Bethany only catches sight of it out of the corner of her eye, but it knocks all the breath out of her lungs. Her older sister is there in the familiar lines of Varric's face, an old glint of mischief like an echo. It's better that Marian's not here, because Marian would only cause chaos, but it's—it's hard. Family is hard. Being away is harder.

"Nothing makes sense anymore, Varric," Bethany says. Her palms contract in the fabric of her robes. Nothing makes sense, and the haziness of Fadelight only exacerbates the unreality of it. She wants Alistair, and she wants her children, and she just wants her family to be together again.

"Nothing ever made sense ever, kid."

Bethany huffs a snort of laughter.

Well, he's not  _wrong_.

Beth leans against him a little, bumping her hip against his shoulder. There's old familiarity to it, old comfort, and she catches the barest hint of gratitude when he smiles. She thinks that of all people, Varric understands what it is to be helpless, especially in the face of something too big for words. Varric understands helplessness, because Varric understands tragedy.

Andraste, but Bethany thinks that Varric understands tragedy better than anyone.

(Varric tells stories, after all.)

"I think this is a little above our pay grade, though," Bethany says, looking back to the Breach. It shifts circles in the sky, a tornado in slow motion. Staring into it for too long brings back the awful stomach bubble of seasickness. "Mine, at least. Alistair's, too."

"Shit, Sunshine, was that humour? You found a sense of humour! I gotta tell Hawke, she's gonna cry, we never thought it was gonna happen."

"Oh, shut up," Bethany's mouth quirks upwards. "And don't tell her, she'll never let me live it down."

"…I don't think I'll be telling her anything, actually."

"Hm? Why?"

Varric rubs a hand over his face. It's a move uncharacteristic of him, jerky,  _guilty_. "I'm not gonna lie to you, Sunshine. I know where Hawke is. But I can't—the Seeker'd kill me. I told her I couldn't get in touch."

Oh, Bethany bets Marian just  _loved_  that.

"Lady Cassandra wouldn't—" she starts.

"She would," Varric says, grim again, and precisely the kind of final that comes from already having had this conversation. "She really would."

"She hasn't asked me about it," Bethany says.

"And she won't, She knows—" Varric stops, shakes his head. It's just so tired, like he doesn't know what he's saying, anymore. "The Seeker knows that you weren't—you're Hawke's sister, Sunshine, but we kept you away from the worst of it. We tried, at least. And she knows that."

"Why?" Bethany asks, though she privately thinks that Varric might be wrong. Marian used to drag her out to all sorts of things, and she can't imagine what they might have got up to if the nonsense Bethany herself had been involved in  _wasn't_  the worst of it.

"'Cause Hawke loves you, but you didn't have a choice."

Bethany blinks. "I'm sorry?"

Varric heaves a sigh. "The rest of us—we picked Hawke, you know? And we kept picking her. But you and Death Wish? You just picked each other, and you got dragged along for the ride. Hawke was always… aware, of that."

Bethany blinks down at Varric, and finds that he's very carefully not looking at her. There's an apology in it, maybe, something like family but sharp—all the bitterherb truths that no one ever really wants to say seem to hover about his shoulders. They hang there like shadows, all the dead gruesome things that no one ever really wants to admit, and they linger for far too long.

It makes her think of Carver, and then it makes her hurt.

"I know," Bethany says, at last, after the moment has stretched too long, turned sticky and thin like taffy. Her sister—yes, her sister would do something like that. "I've always known."

Varric regards her in her silence for a very long time, and then he nods.

Slowly, but he nods.

"Yeah," Bethany's old friend says. There's something that she can't entirely decipher in the waver at the end of the word, there, but she thinks it's a little bit like understanding. Maybe forgiveness. But maybe—maybe resignation, too. "Yeah, I guess you do."

Oh,  _Varric_.

Bethany leans her weight against him, and the wind bites cold. She doesn't bother to say anything else, because he's already heard it, and the City of Chains echoes there, in the spaces where Marian Hawke isn't. They've all grown so old, haven't they? And how much is different, how much has stayed the same, and how all the old stories have a sepia-sleep edge, now, turned fond with nostalgia and distance.

The world has changed.

It's a testament to how long they've known one another that Varric only squints against the sun, and lets her do it.

—

"That bloody idiot's gone off the lyrium! I'm going to kill him!"

Bethany jerks her head up from her reading to stare wide-eyed at her husband. It's been rather a quiet day in Haven so far, and while she doesn't really expect anything anymore, Alistair storming into the house fit to spit fire was definitely not on the list. He slams the door behind him, closes out the rest of the world.

"What's going on?" Bethany asks, when he stops to take a breath. "Are you alright? Who's gone off the lyrium?"

"Cullen," snaps Alistair. He's blown in on an icy gush of air, and even with the door closed, now, the cold lingers. He begins to strip off his armour, frozen irritability in every movement, the  _clank_  of his gauntlets coming apart so loud in her ears. "He's stopped taking the lyrium."

_That's a death sentence_ , Bethany doesn't need to say. Alistair knows it better than anyone; for all that he'd never needed to take enough for the addiction to set in for true, she knows he watched people he considered friends fall victim to the endless thirst. Bethany silently reaches to take his cloak, searching for the right words.

"Why?" she asks, finally. "Did he say?"

"I don't know, because he's a bloody idiot?!"

"Alistair," she says, softly, and it's enough to take the wind out of his sails.

"I'm furious with him, Beth, but I don't want him dead! And that's what he's going to be, if he keeps this up," Alistair says, and there, the chestplate's finally gone and he collapses into himself, just a little. Into her, just a lot. Alistair puts his arms around her and buries his face in her hair.

"Maybe tell him that?" Bethany says into his collarbone, like a question but not.

"No," Alistair says mutinously. "I'm annoyed at him."

"It's been two years, Alistair. We're all adults, we can talk about this  _like adults_."

"He tried to kill you!"

"He didn't, and you know it," Bethany reminds him, because the truth of the matter is that Ser Cullen had been too far gone to try to kill  _anyone_ , much less someone he considered a friend. Bethany doesn't know what happened after they passed him by, that dark smoky night when the world had exploded, but she  _does_  know that Ser Cullen had stopped what harm he could. He'd never been a cruel man.

Alistair snorts, low in his throat, quiet enough that it could be mistaken for a laugh. His arms tighten around her. "I'm still angry at him."

"You're being very silly about this, did you know."

"Yes," he says, nose still in her hair, and it's not looking like he's about to move any time soon. Bethany can't say she's opposed; her husband is warm, and there have been too many times where she wasn't sure she'd see him again to force him to let go when she doesn't have to. "I am."

Bethany doesn't say that she thinks it's childish. He knows  _very well_  that it's childish.

But she lets him hold on, because there's a fine tremor to him, not unlike the one that had held them both the night of the explosion. Some things stay, and this is one of them: the Gallows kept more than mages.

It kept the templars, too.

A long slow breath escapes him, and that's how she knows he knows that she's right.

"I'm going to have to talk to him, aren't I," Alistair says.

"I think you should," Bethany says. She pauses, pulls away to look up at him. The lines of his face are so dear, crooked grin and all. Her golden man. "Ask him why he thinks going off the lyrium is a good idea?"

"…Maybe you should do that bit, love," Alistair says.

"What? Why?"

"Because I'll just yell at him again."

" _Again_?"

"Again," he says, and has the grace to look sheepish about it. Alistair sighs, looking down at her, and runs this thumb along her cheekbone. She leans into it, the old wordless call-and-reply of touch, and she can feel it settle him some. "I can't help it, he's being stupid about it. I nearly want to set your sister on him."

"She'd just encourage it," Bethany says, which is true. Her older sister never did know the meaning of restraint, and that had only gotten worse as they'd all gotten older. Marian might not be as far away as she'd assumed—given the conversation with Varric, Bethany has a sneaking suspicion that her sister is closer than she'd ever imagined—but that doesn't mean that she has any business giving  _anyone_  life advice, much less Ser Cullen, who's only just finally figured out that despite the fact that they could be mirror twins, Marian Hawke and Solona Amell are two  _very_  different people.

"And you won't?"

"I—" Bethany breaks off, frowns. She'd not thought there had been an alternative, but now that she actually  _thinks_  about it… "I don't know."

Because the truth, now, the truth is that in the long run, the lyrium  _will_  kill Ser Cullen. It takes the mind, and then it takes the body, and that's a terrible thought, isn't it? Losing one's mind? Bethany thinks that she'd rather die, first, and she can't imagine that Ser Cullen is very different.

Maybe it's a death sentence, either way.

Maybe prolonging it is  _worse_.

"Beth…" Alistair murmurs, like he can see exactly what's going through her head. Maybe he can; so much of the time, Alistair knows her better than Bethany does, herself. He brushes her curls away from her forehead, frowning. "I know you don't like it, but he can't—it's not good to stop all at once. The withdrawal'll send him into shock."

"It never did for you," she says.

"I was never addicted the way Cullen is," Alistair says, grimacing.

"The way everyone else is, you mean."

"Yes."

It's something that Bethany's learned to think around, through the years; the little bottles of lyrium that Alistair hoarded to bring home, tucked far and away into the false bottom of the locked chest that they kept at the foot of their bed in the estate. And earlier, glowing blue, held up to catch the sun, the extra power never going amiss. And earlier still, Alistair's hands around hers, pressing the tiny phials into her palms like a promise. She had to learn to think around it, because if she'd not been able to, they'd all have been in trouble.

Alistair isn't beholden to the Chantry, and that's really all that matters.

The resignation slides from her shoulders. Bethany reaches up to cup her hands around his face, biting down on her lip. How could she deny him anything, when he asks for so little? "I will if you want me to."

He kisses her palm. "What would I do without you?"

"I could ask you the same," Bethany smiles. "What would  _I_  do without  _you_?"

Alistair chokes back a laugh, lingering so close, and very carefully bends to kiss her on the mouth.

She doesn't know how long they stand there, swaying together beneath the far-away echo of Haven's residents going about their business at the end of the day. It calls to life ghosts that Bethany had thought long laid to rest: Lowtown at sunset, the silver-grey door, the brass handle, and being able to look her neighbours in the face without flushing. The Waking Sea shining outside the window. It feels so long ago.

(Andraste, but it  _was_  so long ago.)

Alistair skates his palm down her side, comes to rest against the curve of her hip. Bethany counts his breaths like she used to count his freckles, waits as he settles a little. Settles.

Finally, his breath goes out of him all in a rush. "I love you, did you know?"

Bethany tilts her head just a little, considers it. He asks her that so often, it's almost like he thinks— "I know. Do you think I'm ever going to forget it?"

"No," Alistair says, chuckles soft. The sound shivers its way down her spine. "But I do like to be sure, love. Can't have someone making off with you, can I? Especially not now, there's no dealing with demons on my own."

"No, you can't," Bethany agrees. "Demons are a bit of a problem for us, right now."

Alistair shakes his head, because frankly he still can't believe the nonsense they've stumbled themselves into, and Bethany doesn't blame him. It's funny, because the world is ending and there is a  _giant hole_  in the sky, and here they are, worrying about the frayed ends of a torn friendship and being in love.

But maybe that's what being a person is all about.

So it's decided, then, that Bethany is going to be the one to talk to Ser Cullen. Alistair won't do it, but it  _does_  need to be done.

It is amazing, however, how difficult it is to actually  _begin_.

A day goes by, and then two, and then three. Bethany gets swept up in the twins' chattering and Malcolm's habit of coming home with bits of arcane knowledge that he has absolutely no business knowing, and she has to wonder how on the Makler's green earth he's getting into the Adan's notes. She gets caught up in kissing Alistair in the morning before he goes off to plan with Lady Cassandra, and in trying to talk Varric into telling her where, exactly, her sister and Isabela have run off to, and in writing to her mother and Merrill, and in meeting the Herald of Andraste, and in all the other things that make up her life, now, snow crunching beneath her boots, waiting for the season to change—

Suddenly, it's been a fortnight, and Bethany realizes that she needs to find the nerve to do what needs to be done. Things can't go on as they have been.

( _Oh. Waiting_.)

She breathes in Haven's bright bitter air, and goes to the practice courts.

"Do you have a moment, Ser Cullen?"

"Oh," he says, blinking against the brilliant refraction of sunlight off of snow. He's overseeing some of the Inquisition's recruits beat each other with blunted swords, and he looks exceedingly uncomfortable with all of these proceedings. "Oh, I—Lady Bethany, I—hello?"

"Hello to you, too," Bethany says, lips twitching. "Would you like come for a walk with me? Your recruits look like they're about to fall over, I think they could use a break."

"I—maybe you're right," Ser Cullen concedes. He turns to bellow something unintelligible at the recruits, and they all fall to the ground at once, puppets with cut strings. There aren't a lot of templars in the Haven, but the ones that have come are all under his command; they're all young and fresh-faced, except for the ones that Bethany recognizes from Kirkwall.

They don't greet her the way they used to, but they listen to Ser Cullen, at any rate.

(The fighting's only just started, but they're already all so tired. It's been a very long war, and it's only just begun. Bethany wonders about putting her heart between her teeth, and thinks it might be kinder.)

Ser Cullen turns to her, already swallowing hard.

Bethany realizes all of a sudden that it's not just her and Alistair and Varric who've grown. The lines beneath Ser Cullen's eyes are very deep, and they remind her of the first time she'd ever met him, when he'd only been a tall man with curly hair and smeary eyes in a long face. When she'd still been hiding, and when Kirkwall hadn't been such an open wound.

Andraste, but it's so easy to smile about it now.

"If you're looking for Alistair," Ser Cullen starts, "he's in—"

"I know where Alistair is, Ser Cullen," Bethany says, not unkindly. As though she'd not know where he was, now that the Inquisition is well into full swing, and her husband spends all of his time arguing with Lady Cassandra about how best to deploy their meagre resources. Bethany's had  _more_  than enough of  _that_ , thank you. She kissed him goodbye this morning, after all. "I was looking for you."

"Oh," he says. Bethany watches the way he has to clear his throat so that he doesn't croak when he next speaks. "Er. Why?"

"Because you're both being dolts, and someone has to do something about it," she says, shaking her head. Bethany sighs, gathers all her courage, and asks, "Have you really gone off the lyrium?"

The colour drains out of Ser Cullen's face. The scar across his eyebrow goes white; it's funny, Bethany doesn't remember a time he didn't have it. She'd not been wrong about the growing up, had she. "He—he wasn't supposed to tell you. I'm sorry, Lady Bethany, I haven't meant to make you worry, but—"

"We don't really have secrets, Ser Cullen," she says, gently cutting the stuttering off. "Alistair's very bad at them."

"Well, you're not wrong," Ser Cullen mutters, glances at her out of the corner of his eye. "I don't know how he kept quiet about you—"

Bethany covers her mouth to hide the smile. It warms all of her bones, how much Alistair is always himself. He really  _is_  terrible at secrets, and it's just funny because everyone knows it. He couldn't keep a secret to save his whole life, but he could keep a secret to save  _hers_.

"I don't know how he did it, either," she agrees. She bumps his shoulder, trying to bring him back. The Gallows consume Ser Cullen whole, pull him down into the dark. "But he did. Good thing, too, I can't imagine we'd have been able to stay married if he hadn't."

"I suppose," Ser Cullen says, swallowing hard.

"So," Bethany says, at length, after they've settled into the rhythm of walking side-by-side, snow crunching beneath their boots. "Are you going to tell me why you've gone off the lyrium?"

"You don't dance around things, do you, Lady Bethany?" he asks, a little weakly.

"No, not anymore," Bethany says, honestly, because it's long past time to dance around things.

The world's been on fire for two years. Bethany Hawke doesn't have the energy to not be direct, not now, not when she's mother to three children who've all got all sorts of ideas in their heads. Sometimes, Bethany gets flashes of understanding into why her mother is the way her mother is, and it's all to do with having children who're old enough to start doing precisely as they please, no matter what she says. There's some pretending to be alright in parenting, she's found, but there's no changing her mind about it.

Ser Cullen's shoulder's slump beneath that ridiculous mantle of his. He looks very young, all of a sudden.

"Alright, yes," he says. "I have."

"Why?"

"You were there, Lady Bethany," he says. "You saw—you  _saw_. What we—what I—I couldn't stop it, all those people, I—" and then he shakes it off, and starts again. "The Gallows exploded, and I did  _nothing_. Can't you see? I didn't want—I don't want anything to do with it. I don't think I ever did!"

Lyrium withdrawal has very obvious tells, when a person knows what they're looking for. Bethany finds it now in the shake to Ser Cullen's hands, the greyish tinge in the dark hallows beneath his eyes, in the awful tremble to his voice. Now that she's looking for them, they're entirely impossible to miss.

_Oh, Ser Cullen, what have you done?_

"You're not wrong for wanting to go off it," Bethany says. "But you're doing it too fast! Look at yourself! When was the last time you  _ate_?"

"Er," he hazards, "Yesterday? Or—the day before, maybe?"

"I'm going to set my mother on you," Bethany swears, shoving her curls out of her face, aghast. "Have you lost your mind? You can't just stop eating, you'll wither away!"

"I think your mother set  _herself_  on me," Ser Cullen mumbles. "She keeps writing me and telling me to talk to more women, I don't know what to tell her…"

Bethany decides that maybe she'll leave  _that_  can of worms alone. Ser Cullen has far too many things to sort through right now to really have the space he needs to figure out how to fall in love with someone the right way, and besides, that kind of teasing is more fun when Alistair is around.

(Alistair makes her laugh the right way. After all, he makes things funny, and she makes things sweet, and together they make things good. A decade, and that hasn't changed.)

"Ignore her," Bethany says, instead. "She raised my sister, that's usually the best way to deal with it. But you'll come for supper tonight, won't you?"

"I don't want to impose—"

"Cullen," Bethany says flatly, dropping all formalities because sometimes, that's all a person  _can_  do, and Ser Cullen can be rather infuriating when he sets his mind to it. "If you try to say no, I'll send the twins to come and bother you, and then you'll get nothing done for a week."

"Please don't," he says. His eyes are wide in his face. Carina and Liana have recently discovered that destroying their father's paperwork will get them attention, and all attention is good attention, as far as the twins are concerned. It's not an idle threat.

"They miss you! You're practically their uncle!"

"I shouldn't be," Ser Cullen says, shame-faced.

"Stop that," Bethany says, brow furrowed. A pair of children go by shrieking with laughter, playing some kind of tag, and they both go still and silent. It's strange, how even though there's a hole in the sky and the entirety of the Hinterlands is on fire, life still finds a way. "We're too old to pretend that it even matters."

"What?"

"My sister started a war," Bethany tells him, completely devoid of emotion. It's nothing but the brutal, bitter truth. "And nothing any of us did could have stopped it."

"If I hadn't—"

"Not even you," she snaps, because of all things, this is one that still burns. "Don't lie to yourself! Marian—she did whatever she wanted,  _whenever_  she wanted to do it! You know that! We just got caught up in it, and—ugh!"

It would be funny if it weren't quite so sad, but in this moment, Bethany isn't sure which one of them she's talking to.

(Maker, but it does feel like this is a conversation she's had with herself before.)

Ser Cullen is stunned into silence at the loss of temper. She doesn't get angry often, does Bethany. Teaching herself to keep her emotions in check was one of her oldest lessons, because with emotion came volatility and with volatility came wild magic and with wild magic came templars.

And templars, of course, came with a Circle.

But the Circles are gone, now, lost to a war, and the constellations of debris and destruction left behind taste of fear and salt. And Andraste, Bethany doesn't miss Kirkwall very much, but she misses the sea. The world could end, and she would still miss the sea.

She looks at Ser Cullen, who's still a little shell-shocked, and winces. "That's—I'm sorry," Bethany says. She pushes the hood of her cloak away so that he can see her face, like an apology. "I shouldn't have said that."

"It's alright," says Ser Cullen, though he doesn't quite look alright. He looks near as shattered as he'd done after the last conversation with Solona, the one that Bethany had never asked about and that Ser Cullen had never volunteered.

It's not alright. All of Bethany's words die gruesome in her throat.

They walk in silence for what feels like a long time.

"I'm surprised you came, you know," Ser Cullen says. They stand out on the rocky drop-off of the shore in the sun, above the frozen crests of the lake. The world edges towards evening, the sunset threatening in amber and orange across the horizon. Twilight steals across the sky, even as light spills down the mountains, fractures through the Breach. It is utterly unreal.

"You thought I'd stay in Kirkwall with Mother and the children?  _Without_  Alistair?"

_After everything?_  she doesn't say.  _After the smoke and the fire and the whole burning world? After_ everything _?_

It's Ser Cullen's turn to wince. "I never said it was well thought-out."

Bethany doesn't bother to tell him that it  _certainly_  was not well thought-out; Ser Cullen knows that already. He's stuck his foot in his mouth more today than most people do in a lifetime, and Bethany feels for him. It's not easy, when the words don't come out right.

But the sun is dipping, now, nighttime creeping in soft shadow fingers over the mountains. It gets dark early, here.

"You're coming for supper, Cullen," Bethany says.

"I don't think I ought to—"

"That wasn't really a suggestion?"

Ser Cullen sort of ducks down into himself, the tips of his ears flushing red. Andraste, but Bethany feels like her mother, scolding someone as needs to be scolded—does that ever stop feeling strange, she wonders, squinting against the sun? Does that ever stop feeling like she doesn't belong in her own body?

"Thank you, Lady Bethany."

"Beth," she reminds him, gentle with it.

Ser Cullen swallows hard, trying to get around the lump in his throat, so tight that Bethany can see it. It's a hard thing, realizing that people care about you; even when they're angry at you, they still care. And Bethany hasn't been angry at Ser Cullen in a long time. Even Alistair, she knows, isn't  _really_  angry. He's angry at the situation, angry at the Chantry, angry at a war that was never theirs to fight. He might even be angry at her sister. He might even be angry at  _her_ , although Bethany doesn't really think it's that.

(It's a lot of things, she'll find out later, but it's never been that.)

"I am sorry," he says, voice a little rough. "For—for everything, I—"

"I know," Bethany says. She reaches over to pat his arm. It feels a little like forgiveness. "I know."

—

Supper is less awkward than Bethany had expected it to be.

Alistair is only a little stiff, and only for a little while; he softens when Carina and Liana spend most of the evening pestering Ser Cullen without end, a ceaseless stream of bright-eyed questions and clambering all over that leaves everyone feeling a little looser, a little calmer, a little safer. There's nothing that will stop children from being children, is there, even after the world has ended.

Evening falls, the odds and ends of evemeal cleared away. Sunset slips in through the window in golds and oranges, fiery reds that precede twilight's purples. Bethany finds herself rocking her son back and forth, humming a wordless tune into his dark hair, and giggling helplessly at Alistair and Ser Cullen as they try to corral the twins to bed.

Ser Cullen, as it turns out, is as useless at resisting Liana and Carina's every whim as he ever had been, and they know it. They're going to be running Haven's children like the Coterie racket, if someone doesn't stop them, but it certainly won't be Ser Cullen.

"Girls, it's bedtime," Alistair reminds them. "Cullen has to be up in the morning, and so do we."

"No!" Lia pronounces, chin held high. She carries herself the way Bethany's mother does, and sometimes it startles Bethany how brilliantly the Amell blood shows. Carina nods vigorously in agreement, clinging to her twin's hand. Mouth and eyes, as they've always been. "We're not done playing yet!"

"Malcolm's asleep, Lia, I think we're all done playing," Alistair tells their oldest daughter wryly, scoops Carina up and hoists her over his shoulder so that she can't wiggle down. "And look! I have Carina!"

"Daddy, no! Put Rina  _down_!"

"Nope, sorry, love. Mummy says it's bedtime!" Alistair grins, because he always does blame Bethany for bedtime. He crooks an eyebrow at Cullen, casual as anything. It's the first time all night, and it feels like a hand reached out, palm up. Like an opportunity to let the past be the past. "Grab Liana, will you? She's a handful when she wants to be."

"She's your daughter," Ser Cullen says, mildly. "You do it."

He picks Liana up, anyway

Bethany's daughter  _squawks_  her indignation. "Uncle Cullen, that's not fair!"

"Sorry, Lia, but I have orders. Bedtime, miss," Ser Cullen laughs, and it's enough to erode the last of the sharpness in Alistair's eyes. Bethany breathes out, a smile hidden in the corner of her lips.

She'd forgotten how easy this was, how much like family Ser Cullen feels when it was good. She'd forgotten the late nights spent laughing, plopped in Alistair's lap and scolding Ser Cullen for his horrible crush on her older sister as his ears flushed dully, how they'd actually been friends.

It's even easier, now, with no secrets left to spoil the air.

Bethany will never know how they manage to get Lia and Rina to quiet down and fall asleep, but they do, somehow, though it takes an Age. Ser Cullen stands in the doorway for a long time, like he's relearning about belonging, but he leaves, too, eventually.

And then it's just her and Alistair, alone.

Neither one of them says anything as they ready for bed, bank the fire, his fingers catching on her hip when they pass into their bedroom like an afterthought. There's familiarity to it, and it glimmers inside Bethany's chest as they run their nightly rituals hand in hand.

It's not until they've slipped into bed and blown out the last candle that her husband finds the words.

"Thank you," Alistair says, very quietly, into the dark.

Bethany rolls towards him, tucks her hand beneath her cheek against the pillow. Alistair lays in profile, the sharp lines of his face all in shadow. She imagines counting the freckles across his shoulders, the sweep of his eyelashes against his cheekbone, the very slight movement of his chest as he breathes. Andraste, but she loves him.

"I thought you'd be angry," she murmurs.

"No." Exhale. "I was—I'm not angry, love."

She doesn't say  _you spoke to him_ , even though she wants to.

"Do you feel better?" she says, instead.

Alistair is quiet for a moment, where the only movement is their mingled breaths. He seems to chew on the words for a long, long while.

"A little," he says, at last. "I'd forgotten how much he loves the twins."

"They're hard not to love," Bethany says, warm with affection and remembered awe. They'd been so little for such a long time, Carina and Liana, but it had hardly been any time at all; they're all awkward angles and unsteady colt legs, now, eightyears old and growing like weeds. Malcolm is the only one still carrying his baby fat, but Bethany can tell he won't be carrying it for long.

"They're growing up too fast," Alistair says.

"Someone's grumpy," Bethany teases, just a little. "People do that, you know."

"They shouldn't!"

"We did, remember?"

"Yes," Alistair says, sighs, very put upon. " _Well_. We were allowed."

"And our daughters aren't?"

"Not right now!"

Bethany laughs. "Silly."

"I suppose I am," Alistair hums his agreement. He reaches over to wrap an arm around her waist, tugs her close enough that they're pressed together, all of their crooks and crannies filling each other up. Bethany finds herself in the cave of her husband's chest, listening to the pound of his heart. Oh.  _Oh_.

"Hello," Bethany says, tips her head up to smile at him. Her hair curls against the pillow. Even through the gloom, she can feel the warmth in his gaze.

"Hello, there," Alistair says, eyes soft. "I've missed you."

"Have you? Even though I'm right here?"

Alistair drops his chin to the top of her head, and exhales very slowly. There's a trembling thread to it that's almost too honest, but it's always easier to say the hard things in the dark. "I always miss you, Beth."

"I always miss you, too," Bethany says. Alistair's fingers walk up her spine, come up to cradle her head. She thinks of old sea shanties, songs from when she was too young to know any better, the Chasind lullabies that her father had sung so many times that she still knows the words. She thinks of Lothering, and how meeting this man had turned her whole entire world upside down, and it's not a lie, is it, that she always misses him. That they always miss each other.

Love is hard work.

But it's worth it.

Alistair raises himself up on his elbow to hover above her, gaze flickering back and forth over her face. Bethany doesn't know what he finds there, but it must be something, because he seals his mouth across hers hard and fast, and it takes her breath away.

He shocks through her veins. Like lightning.

Oh, Maker.

Love is so, so worth it.

—

The conversation went like this:

"We need healers," Alistair had said, a heavy exhalation, all aching like he doesn't really want to be saying it. "People are dying, Beth. I know how much you hate it, so I hate to ask, but—"

"It's that bad?" Bethany had asked, softly, and watched the tightening to his jaw.

"Yes."

"Alright," she'd said, and that had been that.

Some decisions, Bethany's found, are easiest made on the snap, and besides, she remembers the Crossroads. It was a tiny village, nothing more than a waystation between Lothering and Redcliffe. A place to get supplies on the road, a dry roof over a traveler's head if they were lucky, somewhere marginally safe to bed down for the night. She remembers passing through here with Father and Carver, once, and she'd picked a flower with white petals and put it in his hair. Father laughed, a great big belly of a laugh, and then lifted her onto his shoulders. She'd been that small. The memory is fuzzy-soft with fondness, even now.

But Andratse knows, the Hinterlands Crossroads are nothing like that, now.

Sunlight falls lightly on heavily-trod ground, a low moan of pain echoing as a hundred voices rise over the distant clang of weaponry and the explosion of rotted magic. The hills had been alive with it, and now they die with it, too. The road is thick with mud that smells like blood, and it sits acrid on her tongue. The Herald may be able to do a good thing here, but for right now, it's like the whole world's ended.

Bethany's breath catches in her throat. Oh, Maker, Alistair hadn't been lying, had he? People are starving, and people are hurt, and no one's  _doing_  anything about it.

(It's Kirkwall all over again.)

Bethany looks up at her husband, eyes wide. She finds him looking back, mouth tight. They stare at one another beneath the Ferelden sunlight, the crisp autumn breeze painted faintly gold, and the end of the world sweet as melted sugar.

"Well," he says, "I suppose it's a good thing that Solona was willing to take the twins and Mal while we're—"

"Cleaning up my sister's mess?" Bethany supplies, because that's what they're doing, _again_.

"Yes, that," Alistair agrees, grinning faintly. He reaches over to tug on one of her curls, thick dark whorls against his skin. "You can't really blame her for this, though, love. The world's gone mad, it's not  _entirely_  her fault."

Alistair's right, of course: Marian was the match, but the Circles had been tinder about to light for a very long time. So many things had culminated in Kirkwall, and it's just hard not to blame the sparks that had started the fire. Not when it's spread across the continent entire, and  _people are dying_. Bethany leans into the pull of him, allows herself one second to hide in the lee of his body, to take the offered comfort. The Inquisition streams into the valley ahead of them, bringing supplies and help with them, and the Herald of Andraste looks more at home here among the bush and the trees than she has anywhere else.

"It's  _mostly_  her fault."

He doesn't bother to argue with that, because it is entirely true.

It's only half a second's movement to dart forward to kiss him on the cheek. Bethany finds herself caught and held because she thinks that probably Alistair needs this, too.

A kiss is such a little thing between them, nothing but skin to skin.

And yet—

"You're going to undermine my authority if you keep this up," Alistair says into her hair. Bethany feels his arms tighten. "No one's going to listen to me if they know you can show up and I'll stop paying attention to them."

"I can go find work to do," she murmurs. "I'm sure someone needs healing. That  _is_  why I'm here, remember?"

"Don't overwork yourself," he says, pulls back just enough so that he can look her in the eye and so that she can see the masked worry hiding there. Andraste, but Alistair never stops thinking about her well-fare, even when he should.

"I won't," Bethany says, conveniently forgetting how hard healing is. She has to. She  _has_  to. Everything is on fire, and she can't run off. Not again. Not when she can do something to  _help_.

"You're not going to listen to me, are you," Alistair says, flatly. His gaze flicks back and forth over her face, catching on things like broken bones and broken promises and broken homes. There's a lot of unsaid things in it, and it makes her lungs squeeze so sharply that it's sweet.

"No, probably not," Bethany says, honest, around the lump in her throat. "I can be useful here, Alistair."

"I just don't want you to be so useful that you die, Beth!"

"That's not how that works—?"

"With our luck, it might," Alistair says darkly. He returns his attention to the valley for long, quiet moments that hang in the air like lingering droplets of freezing rain. The silence swells, infected like a bad wound, and he finally blows all the breath from his lungs. Shakes his head. "Poor bastards."

"Them or us?"

"Both," he says. "I'm going to be very upset with you if I have to carry you back to camp tonight, Beth."

"I'll try to remember that," she says. Curiosity gets the better of her after a moment, though, and she tips her head, asks, "Would you really be upset with me?"

"Well," Alistair says, blinks. "No. Not really. But I'd be very upset with everyone  _else_  for letting it happen. And I'd murder Cullen."

"He's not even here?"

"It'd make me feel better."

Bethany smothers a laugh into his shoulder. They really ought not be doing this here, not right now. Half the Inquisition is scattered through the Hinterlands, and she thinks she can hear Scout Harding coughing somewhere in the background because Scout Harding has some tact, but there's—

Well.

He's  _Alistair_.

She couldn't resist him when she was eighteen, and she certainly can't resist him now. Templar, Commander, whatever he is, whatever he becomes—they're in this together. That's what belonging is, isn't it? Figuring it out, even when everything is on fire.  _Especially_  when everything is on fire.

Bethany stands up on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek again.

(Let him have no authority; she wouldn't trade this for anything.)

"Shall we go fix this mess?" Bethany says.

"Yes," Alistair says. "Let's."

And so they do. They descend into the valley, and throw themselves into the work.

Andraste, but there's so  _much_.

Bethany loses her husband in the crush of people, and she's not very surprised by that. Alistair's already shouting orders to the Inquisition soldiers to begin unloading the supplies they've brought from Haven; thank the Maker, he always knows what he's doing. Besides, it's not hard to follow the thin reedy sound of pain from the healer's tents. It's a cacophony, a horrible, bone-quaking  _wail_  of sound that shudders up her spine. It sets all her teeth on edge.

And so this is what Bethany does, weaving her way between the remnants of shattered cobbles and the blackened trails where the fires have finally been put out. Puddles of water from the last rain refract the sky in shards, alternating blue and green depending on the light, and here Bethany treads careful. The Crossroads are only barely stable, and there's no telling what will happen, given how much magic's been thrown around. If it's seeped into the ground…

_Better than the Blight_ , Bethany tells herself firmly.  _Nothing could be as bad as that_.

And perhaps not. But the darkspawn—they never really  _thought_  about things, did they? They weren't really people. Bethany thinks about Anders, and about how his shoulders used to hunch up past his ears whenever anyone would ask him about the Deep Roads.

_It's not like you think it'll be. It's not an escape_ , he'd said, the one and only time she'd asked. Anders was perpetually tired, but he'd been worse, after that. Neria had made him a little lighter, but he always got so knotted whenever anyone asked about who he'd used to be. Bethany had left it alone.

But as she works her way through the tents and over people shaking with their pain, she thinks about it.

She thinks about Anders, and she thinks about her Father, and she thinks about Carver.

She thinks about the Taint.

The poison of it, the crawling darkness, the way it sinks into the ground and spreads its ugly claws. The film it leaves over the eyes, the black-and-red rags, the horrible gasping way it leaves a person to die. She thinks she can feel the aftereffects of it, here, the way the ground shirks away from the light even as it craves it, exactly as the darkspawn do.

Bethany has never seen an archdemon, and she doesn't think she ever will.

(Or maybe she just prays that she won't. Please, Andraste, hasn't the world suffered enough?)

She's not sure how long she heals, nor how much magic she expends to do it. Bethany pushes sweat-soaked curls off of her forehead and takes a moment to breathe. The Hinterlands sunshine is weak, but it is warm against her skin, chasing away some of the exhaustion. She wonders, idly, if her children are doing alright.

Bethany closes her eyes—

"I did not think ze Champion's sister would be so quiet," comes a low, musical voice from somewhere over her shoulder. Bethany startles into wakefulness, weak afternoon sunlight in her eyes, jerks to sitting straight up. She'd not even realized she'd fallen asleep, she's more tired than she'd thought—

It registers that someone had been speaking to her.

Bethany twists about to find a Chantry Mother standing above her in the crimson-and-gold Chantry garb, starkly brilliant against the pale blue sky. The face peering out of the headdress is dark-skinned as Isabela in late summer but lined, older, with less fun sparkling in the eyes but the same wicked-sharp intelligence. There's no resemblance at all, but Bethany's breath catches in her throat all the same, and it aches with memory.

(Oh, Maker, Bethany misses her family.)

"Pardon?" Bethany says.

But the Chantry Mother simply watches her, placid, her hands folded in front of her. The resemblance to Isabela fades further, leaves a shuddering hole inside of her chest that's all frozen around the edges and hurts to touch, and Bethany brings herself back. The Mother is waiting for her, as though she knows very well that Bethany's been lost inside her own head.

"You do not resemble her," the Chantry Mother says, with no inflection beyond the throaty roll of an Orlesian accent. She tilts her head just a little, the purse of her lips strange and pensive. Bethany tries not to recoil. She's spent her whole life hiding in her elder sister's shadow, and despite the fact she's grown, despite the fact that Marian's been gone for months, despite a war and a hole in the sky, it still—still feels wrong, when a Chantry Mother looks through her like she's made of glass.

"No," Bethany says, slow, soft. She inhales courage. "I don't."

The Chantry Mother kneels down next to her, smooths a hand over the troubled brow of the prone body in front of them. Andraste, if the wounds don't get him, the fever will. Bethany looks at the Mother out of the corner of her eye, and wonders just how much death there's already been. How much there is to come. How much didn't have to happen at all.

Most of it, truthfully.

Bethany tries not to think about it too much—she was as much a part of it as anyone in Kirkwall, and perhaps more-so, given the proximity to Marian. As though wars are as easily ended as they are begun; the knowledge shudders behind her ribs, thudding perfectly in time with her heart.

So, no: Bethany does not resemble the Champion, and the difference grows starker by the day.

It's very quiet between the two women for a long moment. The Chantry Mother shores up her space, knees ground into the dirt, and doesn't look particularly holy. She mostly looks… ordinary, like any other person among the dead and dying, trying to get by. The Crossroads hover around them, clouds streaked out across the sky in wispy white fingers, delicate as lace, pale as snow, and Bethany thinks again of Isabela, and again of Marian, and yet again of the Taint.

All the things they'd had to leave behind.

"I did not mean to offend," the Mother says. There's a kind of detente to it, an apology stitched between the lines. "I 'ave only met ze Champion once."

Bethany's shoulders drop from where they'd bunched up around her ears.

"You're not wrong," she says. "We're not alike, my sister and I, but she's—"

"She is still your sister," the Mother supplies.

"Yes," Bethany says, because it's true. Marian is still her sister, will still be her sister when the world ends in fire and blood. Maker, but it already has! She doesn't have to look up to feel the horrible  _wrongness_  of the Breach, the way it makes all of her teeth ache in her mouth, choking up her throat. "She is."

"Family is 'ard," the Mother says. She smooths the skirt of her habit over her knees, one long unbroken movement that Bethany recognizes from when she does it herself, something to drop the eyes, something to make yourself look approachable, vulnerable, not a threat.

_Trust me, I'm here to help_ , the movement says, an offer so sweet that it's almost a shame it's a lie. Bethany had wanted to be a part of the Chantry once, but that was a very long time ago.

Apology or not, she doesn't really want it anymore.

And she has no business being  _anyone's_  puppet.

"It can be," Bethany says. Healing's blue-green-white glitters flickers and fades from the tips of her fingers, there and then not. And she's feeling better. It's easy to pull her older sister's vicious confidence over her face like a mask. "I'm sorry to be blunt, Mother, but what are you looking for? I don't know where my sister is, you see. You'd be better off asking Varric."

"Zat is not what I wished to ask," the Mother says. "I only came to say 'ello. I have 'eard of you, of course. Ze Inquisition has done much good for ze people 'ere."

_I'm sure you have_ , Bethany thinks, sharp and unbidden. She tamps it down, trying to find the armistice of the moment before.

But this is not just a conversation.

These things never are.

"We're trying," Bethany says, voice level. "People expect the world from the Herald, but she can't do everything. This is helpful, at least."

"I suppose," the Mother says. Bethany can feel the weight of the woman's gaze, heavy with measure

The silence between them is so loud.

"Ah," says the Mother, at last. She stands and it takes forever. The afternoon sunlight glints off the golden thread stitched into the sunburst on her chest, starry-dazzling in Bethany's eyes. "I should leave you. You 'ave 'ealing to do, I am sure. You are doing good work, 'ere, and we do appreciate it."

"Thank you, Mother," Bethany says, ducks her head.

"Enjoy ze rest of your day, Lady Hawke."

"I'm sorry," Bethany calls after her, trying to keep the cold that's struck her from her voice. Oh, Andraste. "I didn't get your name?"

The Mother smiles at her over her shoulder, only the faintest wisp of curl to her mouth. Forgotten terror threatens in Bethany's throat, sharp like metal, red and bitter like brass.  _Templar_ , the word buzzes when it should mean nothing, anymore.

"Oh," the Mother says, smiles. Her eyes are dark and shiny in her face. "Please. Call me Giselle."

—

When Alistair finally stumbles into the tent that they're bunking in for the next while, his mouth drops open.

"Are you going to put on your own clothes?" he asks, faintly.

"Should I?" Bethany asks, hitches the neckline of his shirt higher up her shoulder. Languid pleasure stirs in her chest at the naked want on his face. Alistair never did know how not to wear his heart on his sleeve; it makes her shivery-tender sweet behind the ribs, and only twice as possessive.

Alistair crooks an eyebrow at her. "Really, Beth?  _Really_? How do you expect me to think when you're wearing my shirt?"

"Oh, hush, you think just fine," Bethany says, pinking faintly. How does he manage to do this? How does he manage to make her feel like she's all of eighteen years old, stumbling over the hem of her pinions, magic clenched too tight in her fists, so completely useless at being any sort of  _person_  around him? They're both grown adults! They've both killed people! They're in the middle of trying to fix a  _war_! More to the point, they're  _married_!

Alistair laughs, softly, a golden thing from under his breath that colours up the air around them as he takes his armour off and makes his way over to settle himself down next to her on the bedroll. His skin is warm beneath hers, summertime freckles fading away in the Frostbacks' snow. For all that her husband has spent the last decade of his life with her in Kirkwall's madness, he's still a Hinterlands creature at heart. Bethany remembers how he used to carry Ferelden with him, just as Carver did. Maybe she ought not be so surprised that the men she loves the most carry the wild nothing home with them.

It's just that sometimes Bethany thinks that Alistair won't even admit it to himself, how glad he is to be home.

"Hello there," Alistair murmurs, brushing his nose against her cheek, his mouth against the line of her jaw. "Did you have a good day?"

"Three people died," Bethany says, softly, and only because he'd asked. There are no secrets between, but, still. Three people. They'd passed in the quiet, but at least she'd been able to do something for the pain. "More tomorrow, probably."

Alistair's arms go tight around her. "I'm sorry," he says, a murmur.

"So am I," Bethany says, and she is. Maker, but she is. "And I spent the afternoon talking to a Chantry Mother."

"Well, that's  _far_  worse than dead people," Alistair reflects, but there's truth beneath the levity. "Are you alright? What did she want?"

"Honestly, I don't… know," Bethany says. She's thought about it for hours, but she still can't quite decipher what it was that Mother Giselle was looking for. "It was very odd, she seemed to want—I really don't know."

Alistair makes a low dark sound under his breath. "Bloody hell, I can't leave you alone for five minutes, can I?"

"It's fine, nothing happened," Bethany shakes her head. She runs a finger along the line of his collarbone, trying to take his attention away. "I'd rather not talk about it. What about you? How was your day?"

"Quit it, I really can't think when you do that," Alistair complains, nips at neck right where she's most ticklish in punishment. Bethany giggles, squirms, bites him right back. "Hey!"

"You bit me first!"

"Because you're— _hey_!" Alistair breaks off when she does it again, and tries for a glare that doesn't work very well for the fondness in his eyes. "Brat. My day was terrible, so I'm rather glad you're here."

"Why?"

"We're heading to Val Royeaux."

"What? When?"

"Soon," Alistair says. "As soon as the Chantry will give us the time of day."

"Oh," Bethany says. "Maybe that's what she wanted, then."

"What?"

"To know where I stand."

Alistair inhales sharply, air hissing through his teeth. He yanks her into his chest and closes around her tight as vice and Bethany, Bethany lets him hold her constricted there, covered over and held down and full up, safe only because they're together. She can't quite breathe and it hurts, but she won't— _can't_ —push him away. She smells skin and sweat and metal, hears nothing but the harsh pull of air as he breathes and the  _pop-crack_  of her spine, feels only flesh and bone closing in tighter and tighter.

Oh, but she can taste his fear.

(Her own, too. Always, too, her own.)

Bethany and Alistair cling to one another in the fading orange glow of the embers of the fire outside for a long time, muted by the canvas of the tent walls. Maker, they have to be so quiet, they can't make a sound for fear of waking half the camp. But Val Royeaux looms over the horizon of the mind, an ominous shadow painted over in Orlesian gilt and pastels. The Divine's city. Andraste, but a shiver still works its' way down Bethany's spine just thinking about it. She presses her face into Alistair's shoulder, doesn't move until the shaking stops.

"Really, though. Are you alright?" he asks into the dark.

"I will be," she whispers.

Neither of them says anything else. They don't need to;  _I will be_  lingers on the tongue like fine wine. Alistair's breathing evens, eventually, slipping down into the natural rhythms of a body in repose. He relaxes in increments; he so rarely gets the kind of rest he needs that it takes a long time, all of his muscles unknotting one by one. Bethany counts the seconds between his breaths, counts the freckles swallowed by the shadows, counts the individual spikes of eyelashes over skin. It slows her heart rate down until it's something manageable again.

Bethany can only stay curled beside him, listening to the steady  _thud_  of his heart, and think that she might not ever sleep well again.

—

.

.

.

.

.

_tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so in the last six months i: started a new job, knitted fifteen scarves, and started dating somebody new. like, do you see why this took so long? also sometimes i just need half-year breaks or something. whatever. come say hi, i love to talk!

**Author's Note:**

> i've started a new job and i'm too busy to write fanfiction but HERE WE ARE.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~im never escaping this ship am i~~


End file.
